the Esruc-protocol
by ThisCat
Summary: A couple of skilled thieves try to break into Avengers tower. This turns out to have certain problems. Namely, the recident AI enjoys watching horror-movies... Rated T for language and such.


**Again, I know I have an ongoing story, but this wanted out. Inspired by "Unauthorized Access" by Del_Rion (another great author). I really just enjoy JARVIS being terrifying, since he can be very good at emulating things like HAL and such from movies. Nevertheless, I have never written horror before, so if it falls a little flat that' why. Enjoy.**

* * *

At the time, the Avengers were out. They had gone to town for a bit of bonding and all the topmost floors of the tower were empty. Empty except for JARVIS that is. This was not entirely an accident. Stefan and Aina had been watching the tower for weeks, waiting for a moment they would be unlikely run into any superhuman beings who might object to having strangers in the house. They had been careful, watching from a café just across the street under the guise of doing their work there. It was not unusual enough for anyone to take notice. In reality they had been putting together a plan. Every thief with big dreams knew that Avengers Tower was a goldmine. Not only the unreleased tech and ground-breaking experimental gadgets from the workshop that just had to be there, but any intelligence on the Avengers themselves could sell for an incredible price. The problem, of course, was that the tower also had one of the strongest security systems in the world. Stefan and Aina would not let that stop them from trying. After all, what was the worst that could happen?

* * *

Just half an hour into the team outing, Tony Stark received a phone-call from home. Seeing as no one was home, he figured it must be important and picked up. JARVIS' calm, controlled voice flowed through the speaker.

"Sir, there seems to be intruders in the tower."

"What, how?" The conversation around the table paused as he spoke a little louder than expected out of shock.

"At least one of the intruders seem to be a fairly skilled hacker, sir. They overrode my protocols long enough to get into one of the elevators."

"What the hell, J? We have countermeasures for this kind of stuff."

"Indeed we do, sir. And they worked very well considering this is an unknown enemy. I have regained complete control of my own systems. If I may inquire as to what should be done with the intruders?" The team looked at him with questions in their eyes now, but Tony held up his hand in a silent promise to explain later.

"We could just call the police." The tone in Tony's voice was enough for anyone to understand this was not really an option in his own mind.

"Sir, the severity of crimes our intruders has committed are hardly enough to keep them locked up for very long, and I calculate a rather large probability of them coming back and trying again if they get the chance. Something else may be in order?"

"Scare them straight, huh? Alright, run the Esruc-protocol, don't kill anyone. We'll pick them up when we come home."

"Very well sir." Tony was sure he heard a gleeful undertone in JARVIS' voice as he hung up.

"Oh, boy" he looked up at the team, "this'll be fun."

* * *

"We made it! We seriously made it! You're a genius, Aina!" Stefan was nearly jumping with joy as the elevator moved past the seventh floor. "We're actually in Avengers tower, and we didn't trip a single alarm!"

Aina clutched her laptop closer to her chest and looked down at her feet, but she was also visibly grinning. "It wasn't that much. All systems have vulnerabilities, and there's just no one to fix them at the other end right now."

"Oh, just admit that you're a genius, and soon you'll be a rich genius, together with me! Just imagine what we'll see up there."

"Yeah, I know." She raised her head, nervous, but exited. "thirty-eight floor now."

A few seconds passed in silence as they watched the floor-numbers go up… before the elevator suddenly grinded to a stop. The couple shot each other bewildered looks, but did not get the time to say a word before an unfamiliar, disembodied voice filled the small room.

"Intruders detected, initializing Esruc-protocol." And then "Hello children."

Aina froze. She could not move. She could hardly even breathe around the huge knot of terror that had suddenly materialized in her throat. This _could not be happening_. They had been discovered. They were stuck in an elevator, someone was speaking to them from the ceiling and they would likely be taken to the police. _Oh God_, she could hear herself thinking, _oh, God, please let them just take us to the police!_

"Who the fuck are you?" Stefan yelled, looking around him as if the voice would be sitting in a corner if he only looked quickly enough. "Who the fuck are you? Did you stop the elevator? What the fuck is the Esruc-protocol?"

"My name is JARVIS, I am designated as the security-system for all Avenger secrets. You are currently stuck between the 41st and 42nd floors of Avengers tower. There is slightly above 142 meters to ground level from where you stand. A little more if one counts the three basement levels, though I doubt this makes much of a difference to you."

Aina was hyperventilating now. Her body curling in on itself, simultaneously shying away from the walls and trying to hide in a corner. The bright lights mocked her as they called forth memories of a small child wanting to reach the light switch, but not daring to step out of bed. She curled into a ball on the floor and whispered, barely audible between breaths, _oh god oh god oh god_.

Stefan processed the words that had been said. Designated as. Probably a computer. Not human. Security system. Probably set to kill on sight. _Fuck_. He stepped over the control pad of the elevator and started to push buttons. Not even the alarm-button seemed to be working.

"A surprising amount of humans are afraid of elevators," the faux-friendly voice came from the ceiling again, "in truth, the brakes on modern elevators are good enough that an elevator will never reach any kind of lethal velocity under normal circumstances."

For a few moments, Aina's frantic breathing was the only sound to be heard.

"It will take me approximately ten minutes to override the brakes in your elevator."

A high-pitched whine escaped her lips as the screen previously displaying the floor number suddenly switched to the numbers 9:59, and they immediately understood that the numbers were counting down.

"_Fuck!_" Stefan yelled again. He tried the open-door button a few more times before he turned towards his shaking partner.

"C'm on darling, calm down. It'll be all right. You're a genius remember? Just hack back into the systems and we can get out of here. Easy. No problem, just breathe." He kept his voice soft and calming as he sat down beside her and touched her arm. He needed to get her calm, she was his best way out of this. He was faintly proud of himself for keeping his emotions under control in front of her while he was almost overcome by the urge to hit someone. He knew very well that violence would get him nowhere here.

"O-okay, I'll try." A few nerve-wrecking minutes passed as she pulled open her laptop and tried to pass through the firewalls again. Stefan watched the timer tick past 6:00 before she spoke again.

"Fuck, dammit, I-I can't, I'm sorry, he's locking me out. It's like the system isn't even there anymore. I just- I'm sorry." Her voice faded out as Stefan rose to his feet with a frustrated growl.

"Fuck you! Fuck you, you smug bastard. Like it would ever take you exactly ten minutes to do something like that. What're you planning?" He was actually shaking his fist at the numbers now.

"Stefan!" She gasped, but her voice was drowned out by the much stronger voice of JARVIS. He sounded nearly amused now, but mostly sarcastic.

"It seems I have underestimated you. Seeing as you so easily saw through my bluff, I will do my outmost to tell you the truth from now on, however short that might be."

The timer immediately ticked down two and a half minutes. It was now at 4:32. Stefan answered with a few more unimaginative expletives while Aina seemed to have passed through terror into some desperate form of shock.

"Oh, great. Thank you Stefan, that helped a lot."

He shot her an angry look, but thought better of it. "Whatever, can you get up? There's gotta be a way out of here. Emergency exit or something."

"In the movies it's always in the ceiling." They both looked up. He was rather tall, but the ceiling was just out of his reach.

"Yeah, okay, I'll lift you up."

She left her now-useless laptop on the floor to climb up on his shoulders. She managed to remove one of the tiles there and he pushed her through. The timer said 2:48.

"We were right! Ladder!"

"Great! Pull me up!" He opened her laptop halfway to use it as a stepping stool to reach the edge, and with the help of a lot of adrenalin and Aina pulling from above he somehow managed to climb onto the roof of the elevator with her. She immediately climbed up the ladder on the wall and he followed her, but they still heard JARVIS' voice from the opening below.

"You do realize the only way to go now is up?"

The door to floor number 42 was too covered to use, but Aina reached the emergency buttons on the 43rd floor by the time they heard the elevator below them starting up again. They both understood the AI's intentions quickly. Stefan was beginning to lose it as he looked down at the several tons of approaching death.

"Open the door, open the door, now! Or we're gonna be crushed!"

"I'm opening it! Just a sec… got it!"

She pulled open the doors on the 43rd in the exact moment the speeding, metal box hit Stefan's legs. His mind moved at a hundred miles per hour as he let go of the ladder and kicked off the new floor to hit Aina in the back, and they both tumbled through the door.

* * *

They just lay there for several long seconds. He had his arms wrapped around her waist where he had hit her in the jump. She was curled into a fetal position, shaking badly now. For a few long moments they just allowed themselves to feel relieved at surviving, neither wanting to lift their head and face their new reality. Still, they could not lie there forever. Stefan was the first to move.

The door to the elevator shaft had shut itself behind them, and Stefan knew he would never step through one of those again, anyway. The couple was laying in the corner of a hallway, and he could just make out several doors along the walls to either side.

"C'm on sweets, let's find the stairs to this place." He slowly stood up and looked down at her. The girl was laying uselessly on the side and crying.

"Stefan, look." Her voice was just as weak and trembling as herself as she pointed her finger at where the wall hit the ceiling. "Cameras. He can see everything we do. We're never getting out."

"Bullshit." He looked up and saw that, yes, there was a small, black lens embedded in the ceiling. "You said it yourself, all systems have holes in them. There's gotta be a way out of here. I bet the bastard didn't even expect us to get this far." With a hand under each of her arms he pulled her to her feet and started dragging her along down the hallway. She clung to his arm and looked every bit like a terrified child.

They reached the third door before Stefan realized how solidly they'd hit gold. Looking through the glass window he could see mangled machinery and robotic components everywhere. He pulled her close excitedly.

"Aina, can you believe this?" A wickedly lustful grin slowly appeared on his face. "This is _it_. This is the workshop. Just a few pictures of this place and this whole disaster will have been worth it." Without thinking he pushed the button on the side to open the door, and surprisingly, it opened without protest. He stepped through, but Aina, rather than following, let go of his arm.

"Stefan, no. This is a bad idea."

"Thousands of dollars baby, right…" but the rest of what he said never reached Aina's ears as the door slammed shut between them.

She threw herself against it.

"Stefan! Stefan, dammit! Open the door!" She hit the door, she hit the glass, she pushed the button far beyond any hope of it actually working. She could see him working on the door on the other side, but nothing even pretended to work. So she sank down to the ground, back against the wall with her head in her hands and she cried. _This is not how I wanted it to go. Oh God, oh God, just let it be over._

* * *

The door shutting right in front of him had him startled. He had not thought of it. Stupid. Of course the girl had been right. Nothing was safe here. He worked at the door for a few seconds while she yelled something he could not hear, but he quit pretty quickly as a far too familiar, British accent filled the room around him.

"I am afraid I cannot let you do that. The security breach is already critical. Intruders must not be allowed any further. Intruders must be eliminated."

"Well, you've done a pretty piss-poor job this far, huh?" Stefan was scared. He hated to admit it, but here, practically isolated from the rest of humanity, it was hard to deny. He was alone, under the control of a malevolent security system, and he was scared. Scared and angry, and he did not have anything to take that anger out on.

"That can be fixed." A short statement. Simple. But accompanied by the sound of several different machines starting up around the workshop it was the scariest fucking thing Stefan had ever heard.

"Security breach my ass. I'll show you security breach." he mumbled as he stepped over to the closest cluttered work bench and pulled out his phone. It hit him that none of them had thought to call for help. Not that it would have made much of a difference in the elevator, no one had a response time of less than ten minutes. Now a bubble of hope caught in his throat as he turned on the device, only to crash into a numbing sense of dread as he was met with a red screen and the words ACCESS DENIED. On his _own phone._

He was suddenly very aware that things were moving around him. That bastard computer was trying to kill him, he did not doubt it for a second. First priority was defending himself. Something caught his eye and he ran two steps over to pick it up. It was what looked like a discarded Iron Man gauntlet. From the actual suit. Even here, in mortal danger, that meant something to him, but just as he picked it up it shot painfully out of his hand.

He fell to his knees, clutching his wrist, and turned around. Even in the half-light of the workshop it was easy enough to recognize the Iron Man suit, one arm lifted with the repulsor glowing, though there was something wrong with it. In the recordings, in the public battles, the Iron Man was always undamaged. Scratched up and dented, yes, at worst, but it was always whole. It always kept that air of something human and immovable. This… did not.

This was a gutted shell of the superhero. The head and right arm were gone, the torso practically ripped open and very obviously empty. It moved towards him slowly, in staccato, as if it did not know or care that it was injured. He abandoned all pretence of calm then. He scrambled backwards, away from the approaching monster, and screamed when the claw of a robotic arm suddenly closed around his wrist from behind.

He flailed until it let go and then he crawled under the table. Crawling on all fours he frantically tried to hide from view until he found a spot under a desk that seemed well enough hidden. He curled around his knees there, listening to the creatures walking around trying to find him, and he hid. Like a child in a thunderstorm.

* * *

Aina was not sure how long she had been sitting there before the shaking stopped long enough for her to think. Stefan was gone, she realized that. There was no way to get the door open like this. She would have to find a way out on her own.

She got to her feet, looked through the window in the door just in case, but saw nothing, and started walking down the hallway. It ended in a door just like the one her partner had disappeared behind earlier, and behind the glass she saw what was, miraculously, a staircase. She did not expect much when she pushed the button, which was why she was not too disappointed when the door kept shut. Instead she took a step back to survey the situation and, there, in the corner, an actual _screwdriver._ Just lying there forgotten. _Something she could use!_

She picked it up and weighed it in her hand for a second before she pried off the panel around the door-button. The computer was in control now, but no matter how intelligent he was, simple electronics did not change. It would be a piece of cake to reconnect the button to the door. Just as she started pulling out wires, the terrifying voice from the elevator spoke to her again.

"Please refrain from messing with the wiring? It always takes such a long time to fix that properly."

She did her best to ignore it. There was most likely nothing the computer could do to her out here in the hallway, if there was he would already have done it. It took her a few minutes to strip all the right wires, but when she was done, the door opened soundlessly and without hitching. She took a step towards it and… hesitated. This door was off the grid. It would stay open. She had all the time in the world to go back and look for Stefan. If there was even the slightest chance that he was still alive, it was worth the risk. She turned and ran towards his door.

Opening this one went quicker, she knew all the wires now. As she carefully stepped into the dark and undoubtedly dangerous room, she thought she could just make out his breathing.

"Stefan?" His breathing hitched. Yes, definitely his. Thank God.

"Stefan, I found a way out. Where are you?" She followed the sound of his breath until she found him curled up behind a box under one of the desks.

"There you are. Come on, I don't want to stay here longer than…" he lashed out. He hit her straight across the face with his fist and she stumbled backwards as he launched himself towards her.

"What the hell, bitch? Why'd you come here? Now they're gonna find me." She froze. _What._ She had found him. She had found the way out. No one was even hurt. _He hit her. Why did he hit her?_

"This is all shit. All from the beginning. All your fault. You're the one who said you could hack this place. And now we're both gonna die!" She did not understand. She could not argue, could not even warn him as the two robotic arms came up behind him. They caught his arms and he screamed and thrashed and flailed, but this time they did not let go. They pulled him backwards through a door that had opened in the back just moments earlier, and which closed just moments after. And she was left frozen and alone as a threatening figure stepped between her and the exit.

* * *

The team came home early. No matter how many times Tony said that it was okay and that the situation was under control, no one liked the sound of intruders in the tower. Neither did anyone think the fact that the man had taught his AI how to act like a horror movie antagonist was as funny as him.

"Don't worry so much guys, it's just a bit of harmless fun. I never even thought we would have to use it. He's supposed to make sure no one is harmed anyways."

The team still insisted on cutting the evening short and going home. This was why it was only a few hours later that Tony stood outside his workshop frowning at the mangled electronics of the door.

"We might need to update our electronics, sir."

"I can see that. They still in there?"

"Yes sir."

He found Aina huddled underneath one of the desks.

"Hey there."

"Is he gone? Is it okay? Can I- is it safe now?"

"Yeah, it's alright. You can come out." He frowned again when he saw the bruise across her face. "JARVIS, did you hit her?"

"No sir, her partner did that."

"Seriously?" He looked down at where she had jumped and clutched onto his jacket at the sound of the second voice.

"I calculated a high probability of something like it happening from his reactions early on, and tried my best to keep them separated, but as you can see I underestimated her abilities. It will not happen again."

"Uhu, I see. And where is he now."

"I locked him in the testing chamber, sir. The bots are doing a good job of keeping him under control."

"Oh are they now?" If Aina had had the capacity to be more scared than she already was, the smile that appeared at Tony's face at this would make her.

"Good boys."

* * *

**Not beta'd or anything so please tell me if I have typos. Do you think I did it?  
**

**I'm not sure about Stefan. I've never tried to write a psychopath before. Did you like him and Aina? I'm really not sure.  
**

**Esruc is Curse backwards by the way, because Tony has no clue how to name things properly. **


End file.
